• spudwart@spudwart.com
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    1 year ago

    Truthfully, putting the homeless in a safe warm place that enables them to have access to a library at night sounds like a smart combo.

    • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      My local library has security guards because people keep shooting up heroin in the bathrooms.

      This would exacerbate that

      • oatscoop@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        We should absolutely have safe housing for homeless people with UBI and transitional programs. We should also offer mental health and substance abuse treatment – and in extreme cases humane involuntary treatment for people that are a danger to themselves and others.

        And none of this should take place in shared, public spaces for the safety and dignity of everyone involved. This is a failure of society and needs to be treated as such. Placing the burden on individuals isn’t the solution. Expecting public spaces designed for other uses to pick the slack of a broken societal safety net is insane.

        • Emerald@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          humane involuntary treatment

          You can’t have humane involuntary treatment. In cases where somebody is threatening someone else, I would say involuntary treatment is called for. But we shouldn’t decide when its okay to imprison people for exercising their bodily autonomy.

      • BURN@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Almost nowhere in Seattle offers public bathrooms anymore because of this. It’s a massive problem that still doesn’t have a solution

        • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          we know the solution. it’s building a shit ton of cheap housing and handing it out to people and charging them 30% of the income, not counting the first $20k. it’s just rich psychopaths who run the country would rather profit off of prison and let them die instead.

      • ClarkDoom@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Same. The homeless population has unfortunately made libraries where I live pretty dangerous places and I can only imagine how much worse that would be if they were open all night. My city doesn’t seem to care at all about people shooting up and ruining public spaces.

      • Steeve
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        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      1 year ago

      Homeless people usually don’t have the peace of mind required for reading books, they are kinda busy surviving.

    • FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, nothing against that idea in theory, but in practice, places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth, making it an extremely unattractive place to hang out and socialize.

      Denver’s Union station downtown is a perfect example. It’s a “public private” space that tries to stay open late on weekends to cater to the crowd but ends up being a hellhole.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth,

        You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts. Some are legitimately forgotten by the system and for different reasons lost job/domestic abuse/no fam/disability/health issue/financial issues. And even at that : addiction is also a symptom of a shit society. Not the same issue as what causes other homeless people but there can be more than one problem in a poorly designed system that comes up with the same result of being homeless.

        Society built on capitalistic ideals for more than just survival as a goal has an extremely narrow scope for who it is interested in serving.

        • FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You’re putting all homeless into a box.

          With the exception of your first sentence (me putting homeless people in a box, which I’m not sure if you’re making a pun or not), all of other the things you said are correct and I agree with. The things you said and the things I said are not mutually exclusive.

          In other words, not all homeless are the same, not all are drug addicts, and society should do better at preventing homelessness, and you might still have a late-night library filled with urine-soaked drug addicts.

        • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          also more homeless drug addicts started after they became homeless, not before. being on the street like that deteriorates your mental health. the longer we let this go unaddressed the worse it gets.

    • beefcat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      except I’m not likely to spend much time in my local library if it is constantly filled with homeless people.